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Thomas Schraitle | 19 May 2012 18:48
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Limited Legalnotice?

Hi,

I'm wondering about the legalnotice[1] element and observed some limiting  
characteristics:

1. Currently, legalnotice is (more or less) only useful in  
   *infos, but cannot be used as a division element similar 
   to chapter, appendix, part, or even book.

2. The legalnotice in its current incarnation doesn't allow
   any substructures.

The reason why I'm asking is that I have some open source licenses which 
contain substructures. These licenses need to be included in the book. At the 
moment, I use appendix for this task. However, from a semantic point of view, 
a legalnotice would be more appropriate. Unfortunately, legalnotice is too 
limited for this task as stated above.

I don't suggest to change that, but I would like to know what's the reason 
behind this (probably DocBook's history?)

Thanks! :-)

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[1] http://www.docbook.org/tdg51/en/html/legalnotice.html

--

-- 
Gruß/Regards
  Thomas Schraitle
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Fredrik Unger | 19 May 2012 20:54
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Re: Limited Legalnotice?

Hi,

I think the use case for legalnotice is not to list licenses that needs 
to be included somewhere but to put a license at the beginning of a book 
for example.
Most books have a Copyright statement and more before the title pages.
Others would have to correct me but I think that is the background.

Could you describe your use case in more detail ?
Is it a software manual that needs to include for example the GPL 
license as a full text ?

Regarding point 2. legalnotice can have quite some children (63) 
including <para>. copyright only 2. What substructures do you miss ?

I have worked with a different use case.

I looked to use Creative commons in a document in November 2007 [1], and 
wanted the "Creative commons" look. That was my first try.

Some years later in June 2011 I tried to add some CC licensed images in
a document, and wanted to attribute the author. I ended up writing
a small proposal.[2] It is still limited to the info tags.

I filed a RFE in February this year just to see if my (small) work could 
be useful. RFE 3491860 [3]
This RFE is under discussion by the Technical Committee [4]

My problem was two fold as the solution shows. [5]
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Thomas Schraitle | 19 May 2012 22:04
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Re: Limited Legalnotice?

Hi Frederik,

thanks for your quick reply. :-)

Am Samstag, 19. Mai 2012, 20:54:30 schrieb Fredrik Unger:
> 
> I think the use case for legalnotice is not to list licenses that needs
> to be included somewhere but to put a license at the beginning of a book
> for example.

That was also my experience. After further investigation, I laid too much into 
legalnotice. I've found out that it is used on the imprint of a book or 
article.

> Most books have a Copyright statement and more before the title pages.
> Others would have to correct me but I think that is the background.

I guess, you are right with your assumptions.

> Could you describe your use case in more detail ?
> Is it a software manual that needs to include for example the GPL
> license as a full text ?

Yes, that's the idea. For example, my current cookbook project incorporates a 
CC license:

  http://doccookbook.sf.net/html/en/

At the moment, legalnotice is used as a kind of "introducery" legal material 
which points to the complete CC license at the end of the book. The complete
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Fredrik Unger | 21 May 2012 12:43
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Re: Limited Legalnotice?

Hi,

On 05/19/2012 10:04 PM, Thomas Schraitle wrote:

> It seems we need to distinguish between the two use cases:
>
> 1. Express a license with the appropriate DocBook element. A license
>     is usually subdivided into several portions.

Ok, yes, I understand, in your case it is a larger block than just an 
info and maybe multiple of them. I would still tend to also try to use 
simpler model for known license.
It would be nice to make an on-line repository, so that the author
just can include it.

<appendix>
<title>License information</title>

<para>The tool YYY is licensed under GPL 2.0</para>

<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" 
href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-2.0.docbook.xml" />

<para>The library ZZZ is licensed under GPL 3.0</para>

<xi:include xmlns:xi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XInclude" 
href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.docbook.xml" />

</appendix>
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Thomas Schraitle | 21 May 2012 14:34
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Re: Limited Legalnotice?

Hi Frederic,

On Mon, 21 May 2012 12:43:49 +0200
Fredrik Unger <fred <at> tree.se> wrote:
> 
> On 05/19/2012 10:04 PM, Thomas Schraitle wrote:
> 
> > It seems we need to distinguish between the two use cases:
> >
> > 1. Express a license with the appropriate DocBook element. A license
> >     is usually subdivided into several portions.
> 
> Ok, yes, I understand, in your case it is a larger block than just an 
> info and maybe multiple of them. I would still tend to also try to
> use simpler model for known license.

Well, as mentioned, this is probably out of scope for GFDL. That
license requires to include it *completely*. At least that is what
our license experts say. 

As an anecdote, for example, we wrote a quick start which was only 2-4
pages long. However, GFDL requires to include the license regardless of
how long the original document is. When we included it, the complete
document was around 10 pages. Actually, the license was longer than the
text. ;-) However, shrinking the font size for the license text reduced
it to an acceptable length. ;))

> It would be nice to make an on-line repository, so that the author
> just can include it.
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Gmane